How To Automatically Update Sharepoint List With Email Sent Date - email

Question

In a SharePoint site I keep a list of various projects for workflow management. For each project periodic MS outlook emails are sent containing standard data and formatting. Currently, when an email is sent someone has to manually key in the sent date in the list for the applicable project. Is there a way when an email is sent to have the project in the SharePoint list automatically updated with the sent date? We would prefer that the email and attachments not be retained within the SharePoint site. Specifics or links to specifics on how to accomplish this would be appreciated. thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming your are able to deploy a custom event handler to your SharePoint site a solution for your problem might look like this:
Create and email-enable a document library on the same SharePoint web
Send a carbon copy of the periodic email to this library
Create and register a custom event handler that gets called when an email is send to the email-enabled document library (see 'Creating a SharePoint Event Handler' on MSDN)
When the event handler gets called it inspects the subject or content of the email to identify the project list item in the project list
Set the 'Email sent' date of that project list item
Delete the email from the email-enabled document library within the event handler
Hope this helps.